The iPad was announced earlier this week at a special event held in San Francisco and I, like many other people, held high hopes for this device that Steve Jobs is purportedly quoted as saying
“…will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”
I followed the announcement intently and admittedly, like tons of other people, felt a little underwhelmed by what I saw. Apple suffers the paradox of being both the darling of the tech gadget world, as well as its biggest target for derision, so when the event ended and the product didn’t live up to the rumors, the collective sigh of disappointment was loud enough to eventually find its way to other galaxies if someone there cares to listen.
After pausing to think a little, though, I realized that though the iPad didn’t meet the expectations of those of us who care about the latest and greatest and who expect nothing less than mind-blowing revolutions in computing every time Steve Jobs takes the stage, it will still be a success. I predict that the majority of the gadget-buying public will love this product and I further predict that the iPad will be a smash hit in the education space. If you’ll hang with me for a bit, I’d like to proffer my thoughts on why I claim the latter.
Now, you will never hear me claim to be an expert on the tech space OR the education space, but I did spend 1.5 years of my life working as a notebook product manager at Lenovo focusing on the K12 education market. I was tasked with understanding this market’s needs and figuring out if we could successfully create a product that was both ideal for student learning and fit in school budgets. Sadly, the answer was ‘no’ at that point in time. However, the things I learned during that time did give me good insight into what a good computing device for helping students learn would look like and I’ve listed them below and graded the iPad against each one. They are loosely ranked in order of importance; different schools and school districts assigned the priorities a little differently.
1. Price
A $499 price point is very reasonable for a capable computing device that schools and school districts can deploy en masse. Additionally, I think it’s safe to assume that Apple will offer a fairly substantial discount on the iPad for large, institutional orders. Apple has a significant advantage vis a vis its competition here, as it often sells an entire educational eco-system, made up of hardware, software, training and support and professional services. These ‘package deals’ can easily mask or help defray the cost of discounting the hardware, making the iPad a very tempting purchase for schools with decimated budgets.
2. Durability
Three of school IT departments’ most significant service complaints involved display breakage, keyboard keycaps popping off and spinning platter hard drive failures. The iPad addresses the latter two complaints by not even having those components and choosing a virtual keyboard and flash storage instead. While drops and accidental (or intentional!) stabbing of the screen will still be present, the tough unibody construction of the iPad will prevent displays from cracking because of flexion, a very common occurrence in the school environment.
3. Battery life
If the iPad lives up to its claims of 10 hours of *usable* battery life, then it will easily surpass the battery life on the majority of notebooks and netbooks with standard batteries easily. Needless to say, any education device has to last at least as long as the schoolday, and often, beyond that. The majority of educators and school IT directors said that 6 hours of battery life was the absolute minimum. The iPad should meet this requirement quite easily.
4. Size and weight
“Small, but not too small. The screen has to be big enough to be usable”
“It has to be light. These kids are already carrying bookbags that adults will struggle to carry”
These are direct quotes from educators and school administrators. With a gorgeous 9.7″, 1024 x 768 IPS display and maximum weight of 1.6 lbs (models with the 3G card), the iPad fits those requirements nicely.
5. Ubiquitous access
One of the promises of technology in education is ubiquitous access – the idea that any student, anywhere, can gain access to the knowledge resources they need to learn, think, collaborate and create. One of the fundamental components of ubiquitous access is the ability to easily connect to repositories of information and to systems and tools that allow educators and students to connect with each other. The iPad has both WiFi and mobile broadband capability, which supports ubiquitous access. Furthermore, the already heavily discounted 3G plan that Apple’s managed to hammer out with AT&T will become even cheaper in a large scale deployment.
6. Touch + slate form factor
Many educators I spoke to cited touch as a feature that would allow them to really explore new learning techniques and help technology fulfill its promise in the classroom. Many said that they would love a slate or a convertible tablet with touch, form factors they felt were superior to a notebook with touch as an afterthought. The iPad’s design inherently delivers on these requests. The little hands of younger K12 students, who have as-yet-to-be-developed fine motor skills would greatly benefit from the ability to use the most natural human-machine interface current technology allows.
7. Space constraints
Classrooms all over the country are becoming smaller by virtue of the rapidly growing school-going population. In small classrooms, having small devices that fit on small desks and in small charging carts is almost certainly de rigueur. The iPad’s slender profile and minuscule footprint assures compliance with this expectation.
Those are the factors that weighed most heavily on decision makers’ minds when they studied the purchase of technology for their classrooms. However, there are other things that could make the iPad extremely favorable for the K12 education space.
1. No multitasking
What appears as a bane to many could turn out to be a boon for educators who want to stop students from messing around on the web or playing games while class is in session.
2. iPad specific iWork
I truly believe that Steve Jobs and Apple made this move specifically to address the concerns of the education market. The era of information consumption as an educational ethos is outdated and has been replaced with a push towards the 21st Century Skills of creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration. In order to support this thrust, active creation is a necessity and Apple has addressed this need with a version of iWork that takes advantage of the iPad’s capabilities.
3. Relationship with publishers
One of the factors that’s crippling education (and the backs of many students, I’m sure) is the fact that the education publishers have refused to digitize their content. Digitizing textbooks makes perfect sense, since it’ll lighten students’ bookbags and their parents’ financial burdens considerably. I won’t go into detail about why publishers don’t want to digitize books, but I think it’s safe to say that if any computer company can convince the publishers to do it, it’ll be Apple. With the launch of the iBookstore, they’ve already proven that they can establish business partnerships with the book publishers and with all the talk about the iPad saving the publishing industry, it’s not too far-fetched to argue that the relationship may be more symbiotic than adversarial. Digitized textbooks would mesh perfectly with the iPad’s capabilities.
4. Eco system
I already mentioned the education eco-system that Apple already has, but I think it’s worth mentioning again, given the fact that Apple has a stronghold on this market because of their long history of commitment to this space and the fact that they truly have a complete education technology solution that encompasses hardware, software, training, support and professional development. This eco system suddenly becomes more powerful because there is an extremely attractively priced and featured product that Apple can use to lead their charge into more schools.
My treatment of this argument has not been exhaustive, but I believe that the arguments I *have* made are legitimate. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you think the iPad will make a good education device?